A meteorite weighing more than 2 pounds (1 kilogram) that crashed into the roof of a New Jersey home two years ago may shed light on ancient water in the solar system.
Observers in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania reported seeing a fireball streak across the sky on the afternoon of July 16, 2024. As the object passed south of the Statue of Liberty, it caused a sonic boom felt by residents of New York and New Jersey.
The spectacle came from a space rock the size of a heavy airline that streaked through Earth’s atmosphere at 32,000 miles per hour (14.4 kilometers per second).
Unlike some meteorites, this space rock was particularly fragile and broke apart about 22 miles (35.4 km) above the earth. Doppler weather radar at Newark Liberty International Airport detected a cloud of debris falling to the ground from Staten Island in New Jersey.
Only one fragment was found, and that was because it penetrated the ceiling of the master bedroom of a house in Hillsborough, New Jersey.
No one was injured in the impact, and homeowners quickly donned disposable gloves and scooped up black debris and dust from the bed and carpet using aluminum foil and glass jars, said Peter Jenniskens, a senior scientist at the SETI Institute and NASA Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley.
Jenniskens is the lead author of a study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances detailing the analysis of the Hillsborough meteorite.
The homeowners also patched the roof of their home before it rained that evening — an important step because the fragile meteor is porous and sucks water from the air, Jenniskens said.
This quick thinking prevented the meteorite from becoming overly contaminated. Scientists managed to study the object. Analysis shows it is a rare, primitive type of meteorite that provides a window into the early solar system.
“We found a complex array of amino acids, the basic building blocks of proteins, in aqueous extracts of the Hillsborough meteorite,” said study co-author Dr. Danny Glavin, senior scientist for the Sample Return Division in the Solar System Exploration Division at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
“Most of the amino acids found in Hillsborough are rare or absent in life on Earth, so they are truly of extraterrestrial origin.”
Salty space time capsule
Detailed analysis of the Hillsborough meteorite showed that it is a CM-type carbonaceous chondrite. The letter C stands for carbonaceous and the letter M stands for the Migean meteorite, a carbonaceous chondrite that fell in Ukraine in 1889.
These space rocks are remnants of rocky bodies that floated around in the early days of the solar system and contain hydrated minerals and organic compounds.
There are two types of primitive CM meteorites – CM1 and CM2 – and the biggest difference between them is how much water changed their composition when they were attached to a larger asteroid.
The researchers classified the Hillsborough meteorite as a CM½ because it is intermediate between the two types. The sample is only the second time a CM½ meteorite has hit Earth, Jenniskens said, but it is the first time researchers have been able to study such an intact sample. Similar meteorites that fell in Indonesia in 2020 landed in mud, Jenniskens said.
“This is the first CM meteorite to contain pieces of rock that preserved the interior of the original asteroid,” Jenniskens said by email. “We really have a unique opportunity to learn about the physical properties of the parent asteroid.”
The fragile Hillsboro meteorite broke into pieces upon impact. -SETI Institute
The Hillsborough meteorite may once have belonged to a larger space rock orbiting the inner asteroid belt located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
“Some time ago, a large impact created a significant family of asteroids, and about 6 million years ago, a smaller impact destroyed one of these asteroids, part of which ended up in Earth orbit,” Jenniskens wrote. “This piece experienced cycles of heat and cold due to rotation under sunlight and broke into fragments about 200,000 years ago. Then it took him the same amount of time to hit a small target – the Earth.”
Researchers discovered large amounts of sodium, likely from icy brines inside the original asteroid. When water evaporated on a space rock, it left behind concentrated salt minerals that could create molecules critical to life as we know it, researchers say.
The team also discovered organic carbon and complex amino acids.
“This meteorite contains hundreds of amino acids, and most of them do not occur naturally on Earth,” Glavine wrote in an email. “The set of amino acids in Hillsborough was even more diverse than that found in pristine samples returned from the carbon-rich asteroids Bennu and Ryugu.”
Researchers are working to identify salt minerals in the Hillsborough meteorite and compare them to minerals found in samples collected from Bennu and Ryugu during NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission in 2020 and Japan’s Hayabusa2 mission in 2019, respectively.
Fragments of the Hillsborough meteorite are kept at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
Delivery of ingredients for life
Primitive carbonaceous chondrites are thought to be a type of cosmic rock that collided with the early Earth and delivered organic matter.
The Hillsborough meteorite “provides further evidence that meteorite delivery of organic matter to the early Earth may have been an important source of organic molecules necessary for the emergence of life,” Glavine said.
The discovery of brine on the asteroid is key, said Peter Brown, a professor in the department of physics and astronomy at Western University in London, Ont., noting that it is some kind of remnant of “leaking water or ice.” Brown was not involved in the study.
Samples of the Hillsborough meteorite were kept in sterile glass for study. – Queenie Hoi Shan Chan
Brine “is a really strong indicator about how water moved, evolved and, in particular, how it reacted with organic matter,” Brown told CNN.
“What we can learn about how water alters this type of primitive meteorite is very important for astrobiology and early biology on Earth.”
According to him, water could have persisted under the surface of the Hillsborough meteorite’s parent asteroid for a long period.
Meteorites like the Hillsboro meteorite contain the chemistry of the early solar system because, although modified by water, they cannot withstand extreme heat, Brown said. Holding the meteorite as if it were more like soil or clay falling apart rather than solid rock would reflect its lack of exposure to heat – and a higher chance of preserving a snapshot of how water interacted with minerals and organics, he added.
Quick and informed action by the homeowners led to the discovery of the brine, Brown said. The rains likely caused any additional meteorite fragments that fell outside to disintegrate.
The homeowners quickly contacted study co-author Mike Hankey of the American Meteor Society, who helped them preserve the sample and minimize contamination.
“We realized almost immediately that what happened to us was incredibly rare, and we felt a responsibility to preserve the meteorite for the scientific community,” the homeowners, who wished to remain anonymous to protect their privacy, shared via email. “It is still surreal to think that this meteorite traveled through space for millions of years before ending its journey here at home. This whole experience has been incredible, and we are honored to play a small role in advancing scientific understanding through its study.”
Doorbell or dash cam videos of potential fireball sightings could help researchers track and collect meteorites—and ultimately improve their understanding of how the solar system evolved.
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